string spacing at bridge

[Mat Roop]

Hi Folks... recently a client asked to make a new bridge but specified a wider string spacing at the bridge... said the violin sounds better that way. What he was looking for was 34.5 mm  whereas my usual is 33.5... more or less.

Ok... so that got me thinking about one of my own antique shop basic fiddles that just does not make the grade. so I lifted the e & g further out and got a significant improvement. 

Setting aside the issue of playability...

1- is there an accepted effect on tone by widening or narrowing the string spacing at the bridge

2- The placement of the bass bar can vary and so consequently does the post. Should the bridge string spacing reflect the spacing of the post & bridge. 

Thanks for your thoughts!... Mat

[Michael Darnton]

My first concern would be the width of the fingerboard, that it's adequate for the new spacing.; second would be to maintain the same bowing angle between strings. I wouldn't worry about bar and post if you're using the same bridge.

[chungviolins]

Standard is 34mm.

0.5mm either direction won't make much difference. 

[FiddleDoug]

1 hour ago, chungviolins said:

Standard is 34mm.

0.5mm either direction won't make much difference. 

I agree! that's a small fraction of a mm difference between pairs of strings. Trying to attribute sound changes to that is snake oil.

[Michael Darnton]

I don't  agree.

[FiddleDoug]

4 minutes ago, Michael Darnton said:

I don't  agree.

Please share your experience. Always learning.

[Michael Darnton]

First, my experience is that the better the violin, the more your adjustments do. That's why I don't like working on student violins--the payback is tiny. And I don't like to train people to adjust on cheap instruments for the same reason. Most people learning to adjust only get to touch bad violins--I think that's how a lot of myths have arisen--nothing much happened, so they have to grasp at straws as to what they *think* happened, and that's what becomes their personal truth, forever.

However, if a violin is good enough, everything you do has an effect. The problem is that any time a good violin is disturbed it has a temporary change. Try playing for a while, then lift the bridge without loosening strings, move it one mm to the side, then right back and play more. You should notice a difference, but obviously it's not going to stick. So you have to watch out when doing any adjustment, knowing that there's a component to it that won't be permanent. I have a friend who went to a famous adjuster near where he went to school--$200, and the only time he could get an appointment was in the middle of the night. "How'd it go?" "It was GREAT!" ""Did it stick?" "Funny you ask--the next day it went right back to the way it was." So beware.

Regarding string spacing, I have the difference in my ear, but the best way to learn it is to just do what Mat did: pick up the outer strings and move them. If there's a difference, leave them there for a day and see what you think later, to hear if it sticks. I don't comment as much as I used to, but I will tell you that everything that someone here has a question about, I go and try it, immediately if it's easy, later if it's not. I don't take anyone's word for anything.

[bkwood]

1 hour ago, Michael Darnton said:

...so they have to grasp at straws as to what they *think* happened, and that's what becomes their personal truth, forever.

However, if a violin is good enough, everything you do has an effect. The problem is that any time a good violin is disturbed it has a temporary change.  I don't take anyone's word for anything.

I don't know about a change "sticking". Perhaps even on high end instruments the temporary effect of minor adjustments is more about expectations, and the instrument returning to how it was means there wasn't a change in the first place.

[Andres Sender]

42 minutes ago, bkwood said:

I don't know about a change "sticking". Perhaps even on high end instruments the temporary effect of minor adjustments is more about expectations, and the instrument returning to how it was means there wasn't a change in the first place.

I am curious--do you think this doubt of yours to be a rare insight or an idea that would occur to most thinkers?  If the latter, do you think it's something a highly empirical violin maker would just brush aside so they could carry on having wrong ideas about how violins work?  If you think such a maker would be very likely to test the idea, how hard do you think it would be to test it?  Thanks.

[bkwood]

18 minutes ago, Andres Sender said:

I am curious--do you think this doubt of yours to be a rare insight or an idea that would occur to most thinkers?  If the latter, do you think it's something a highly empirical violin maker would just brush aside so they could carry on having wrong ideas about how violins work?  If you think such a maker would be very likely to test the idea, how hard do you think it would be to test it?  Thanks.

A rare insight? Not at all. It's hard to judge minor changes in sound objectively is all. It's human nature to judge subtle things according to expectation. Even if one is highly trained it's hard to be sure without objective data. I'm only raising the question of how one can be objective. Myself, I'm only a hobbiest with just a dozen instruments to my name, and I don't mean to come across as impertinent if that's how you took my reply. To your last sentence I'd say it's pretty hard. I don't know how it could be done. But I am always learning.

[nathan slobodkin]

 If this kind of tiny change in string spacing makes a difference in how the instrument sounds I would expect it to be caused by changing the angle between the strings and the bridge feet. While I think it is true that absolutely every adjustment  does matter especially on better instruments just loosening the strings could make as much difference as a 1/2  mm difference in string spacing so experimentation on this would be difficult. If the client feels more comfortable  with a slightly wider bridge I wouldn't think twice about giving him what he wants.

[Michael Darnton]

26 minutes ago, nathan slobodkin said:

 I would expect it to be caused by changing the angle between the strings and the bridge feet.

Totally agree. 1/2 mm on each side is 1mm total. People seem to think that 1mm in bridge foot span makes a differece, but I think the same change in string spacing has a lot more leverage for potential change.

You're right that reading it one-off is difficult. That's why I've been doing a lot of testing of this.